Gary Bell

This year marks Bell's 14th as the executive director of the Philadelphia-based BEBASHI (Blacks Educating Blacks About Sexual Health), founded in 1985 as the nation's first AIDS organization serving African Americans with HIV. Bell has been widely praised, not only for increasing funding and accountability at a time when HIV donations have plummeted, but also for launching such innovative programs as a women's initiative, prison-discharge planning, and, most recently, a diabetes intervention.

As someone working in the field of HIV/AIDS, I have had many conversations about the topic with people ranging from politicians to middle school students. However, I will never forget the recent conversation that I had with a long-term (25+ years) su...

In the U.S., black people are much more likely to be infected with the cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV) than white people. So why are virtually no African-American boys receiving the HPV vaccine? Advocate Gary Bell explores the issue.

There are many well documented benefits to reducing the viral load of an HIV+ individual to an undetectable level. Unfortunately, there also remains a some haziness about the term "undetectable." In actuality, it is somewhat of a misnomer. For someon...

"As the debate rages about the need for and availability of contraception, we in the African American community should understand the huge stake that we have in this discussion. ... We can and we must demand more, not less, ownership in our own sexua...

Despite the persistent myth that HIV was a man-made disease, unleashed upon the unsuspecting, disenfranchised of our society (read gays and blacks), now comes more evidence that it may have been present in monkeys and apes for millennia. New research...

President Obama's new AIDS Strategy calls for a renewed effort to reduce new HIV infections by 25%, increasing the number of people who know their status from 79% to 90%. Crucial to the success of this benchmark is to test more people for HIV. This i...

Previous studies have demonstrated that pregnant women are at greater risk of HIV infection. However, a new study, presented at the International Microbicides Conference in Pittsburgh in May seems to demonstrate that men have almost double the risk o...

One of the most persistent myths about the HIV epidemic is that the government (or the other perceived villain-pharmaceutical companies) have discovered a cure but that, for whatever reasons, have not made it available. This reasoning fails to take i...